Seven used to be the luckiest number. At least that’s the impression I had until recent developments. On numerous occasions I have heard people say ‘lucky seven’ when making references to favorable outcomes. But this year things have become a little different. The Chinese consider eight to be a lucky number and have gone great lengths to prove it. According to this Wikipedia article, Chinese believe that eight is lucky as it sounds like ‘prosper’ or ‘wealth’ (in their language of course). I guess you know why Beijing officials want to start Olympics on this date at 8.08pm specifically; neat.

On the other hand, today’s date (2008-08-08) has a nice vibe to it too. You can’t simply ignore the reiterating arrangement in numbers. I guess this happened last year too; but a month and a day earlier (2007.07.07). If you go to the Wikipedia article on number eight, you’ll see there are many facts on this number. I was awestruck to see how many interesting and equally important things have associations to this symmetrical numeral. Just for the sake of completing this post I thought I’ll post the most interesting 8 things on 8 according to the same Wikipedia article mentioned above.

• Eight is the atomic number of Oxygen.
• The maximum number of electrons that can occupy a valence shell is eight.
• In the human adult dentition there are 8 teeth in each quadrant. The 8th tooth is the so called the wisdom tooth.
• There are eight notes in an octatonic scale.
• A byte is eight bits.
• An Eighth is a common measurement of Marijuana, meaning an eighth of an ounce.
• Eight is symbolic for lesbian sexual relations.
• In Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths ramifies as the Noble Eightfold Path; In Islam, eight Angels carry The Holy Throne of Allah in heavens; In Hinduism, eight is the number of wealth and abundance; In Christianity, eight is the number of Beatitudes.

Image courtesy: Duncan. See 8 on Flickr.

We love long weekends. I thought as my new year note this time I’ll post all the long weekends (imposed to Sri Lanka of course). Some of them are convertibles by adding a leave to the list yourself. Hence the list goes:

Long weekends in 2008 for Sri Lanka

January
12 – 15 (14 Mon Leave): 4 days*
19 – 22 (21 Mon Leave): 4 days*

February
2 – 4: 3 day

March
20 – 23: 4 days

May
17 – 20: 4 days

October
11 – 14 (13 Mon Leave): 4 days*

December
12 – 14: 3 days

* – take leave yourself on the day mentioned within brackets to convert to a long weekend

I despise Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). Even cooperates are uncomfortable with the extra burden. In my opinion WGA is an annoyance to users. The simplest update or hot-fix available on the Microsoft website requires a validation.

There have been numerous gigs on “what if Microsoft made …” – the most circulated being a notable urban legend with a comment made by General Motors in response to the Bill Gates’ COMDEX address where he compared the auto industry to the computer industry. This post is about what if Microsoft made automobiles with WGA.

• You need to validate your vehicle with WGA after purchasing.
  • Without validation, you may only drive for 300km. After the 300km limit the vehicle will immobilize. The vehicle will start again, but you may only drive for 10mins. You have to start again to drive it for another 10mins and so on.
  • You will be prompted to validate every time you start the vehicle until validation.
• After a successful validation a new dashboard indicator appears. This tells you that your vehicle is a genuine product.
  • The dashboard indicator blinks every time a new update is received to tell you that your genuine vehicle received an update.
  • These updates may occasionally restart the vehicle to apply themselves regardless of the speed or other critical aspects of your drive.
• You need to re-validate if you decide to change tires, lubricants, filters, wipers, or battery water.
  • You have to buy all those components from Microsoft or otherwise your vehicle is considered non-genuine. However if you decide to upgrade to a high performance component (ex: high-performance air filter) the validation process might think you are cheating. You need to call and convince customer support that this is the same you that bought the vehicle from them.
  • If by any chance the revalidation process fails, the vehicle will run for 10mins and immobilize. This time, certain functionalities will be disabled.
• Engine modifications are strictly prohibited. If you install/replace any engine part, a convincing call to the customer support division is a must. Chances are that you may have to buy a new license and re-validate it to drive your already purchased vehicle.
• If the validation process has a bug or an error in the program, then the vehicle will refuse to start until Microsoft fix the error and you perform a revalidation manually.

Many people have born on October 7th according to these statistics. Apparently the pop-star Alesha Dixon and cricketer Zaheer Khan were also born on this day.

“Happy birthday!” to everyone who is celebrating their birthday on 10/7 and a big “thank you” to everyone who took the time and energy to send me wishes.

As usual, Nadeera had it all planned for a scrumptious chocolate forest cake along with other sugar-rich delights. It was not a huge deal of a party, although a birthday is a day of celebration for many people out there. The thought of writing this post hit me after overhearing someone talking about birthday related traditions at the Japanese restaurant we went out to dine that night.

The following is a brief on how the modern birthday related traditions came in to establishment in the society.

Party
Birthday parties were held because people believed that evil spirits are particularly attracted to someone on their birthday. The largest birthday party happened to date was in 1970 for Colonel Harlan Sanders for his 89th birthday with over 35,000 guests.

The Cake
Some believe that the birthday cake originated with the Greeks, who baked round cakes to represent the full moon for the goddess Artemis. Candles were places to make it glow, like the moon.

Germans are also credited for the first cake and candle. They represented “the light of life” with the candle and they were more skilled in candle making than anyone else.

The Song
The Happy Birthday song is more than one hundred years old. Written in 1893 by two sisters, Patty and Mildred Hill, who were schoolteachers in Louisville, Kentucky, it originated as a morning greeting to their students, entitled “Good Morning To All”. The ownership has swapped hands in multi-million dollar deals ever since Patty’s death and the current copyright are owned by Warner Communications who purchased it in 1989 for more than $22 million dollars. This song is also the most popular song in English language.

The Card

The tradition of sending a birthday card has started in England about 100 years ago to send an ‘apology’ when a person couldn’t visit someone else in person on their birthday.

That’s it folks. This Wikipedia article has many other birthday related information if you need more. And as always keep in mind that “the best birthdays of all are those that haven’t arrived yet.” – Robert Orben

Facts from: birthdaycelebrations.net